Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (July 30, 2024)

Hardcover: 285 pages

An unsuspecting artist uncovers her late mother’s secrets and unravels her own hidden past in a beguiling novel by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.

Months after her mother passes away, artist Tillie Morrisey sees a painting in a gallery that leaves her inexplicably lightheaded and unsteady. When a handsome stranger comes to her aid, their connection is so immediate it seems fated, though Liam is only visiting for a few days.

Working on her own art has always been a refuge, but after discovering a document among her mother’s belongings that suggests Tillie’s life has been a lie, she begins to suffer from a series of fugue states, with memories surfacing that she isn’t even sure are her own. As her confusion and grief mount, and prompted by a lead on the painting that started it all, Tillie heads to a seaside village in England. There, she hopes to discover the source of her uncanny inspirations, sort out her feelings about Liam, and unravel truths that her mother kept hidden for decades.

The fluidity of memory, empowering strength of character, beauty of nature, and love of family braid together in this artful tapestry of a novel.

Excerpt

Liam folded his hands on the table, beautiful hands, long fingers with well-tended nails, only marred by the cluster of gemstone bracelets running up his wrist. Again, she wished he weren’t such a surfer-hippie dude. “Working on your energies?” she asked, pointing.

“Ah, yeah, why not? My sister gave them to me when I started traveling. Reckoned it couldn’t hurt.” He took a breath, fingered the beads. “It’s a challenging trip.”

“Are you a model?”

“What?” He laughed. “No!”

“Actor? Dancer? Professional surfer?”

“I’m pleased you see me as a man of substance.”

It was Tillie’s turn to laugh. “Sorry. You’re just so . . .”

He raised his eyebrows, waiting.

She was going to say pretty, but that wasn’t it. Light skated along the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, and she thought of Tam Lin, the knight stolen away by fairies. Following some instinct she’d learned to trust, she asked, “Would you maybe have time to let me sketch you?”

“You’re an artist, too?”

She nodded. “I have so much work, I wasn’t even going to come tonight.”

“I’m glad you did.”

She let the words skate around in her veins, awakening sleepy blood. “Me, too.”

“I have time tomorrow.” He paused. “Or tonight, if you’d rather.”

An iridescent possibility rose between them. “I would,” she said. “Rather. Tonight.”

The rest of their meal had no weight. Liam ate his sandwich, and they dashed into the rain and miraculously caught a passing cab. Tillie gave the address and fell back in the humid car. His knee and hers touched. Neither of them moved. She smelled nutmeg on him, or maybe it was just his skin.

“I hope your coat is warm,” she said. “It’s going to be cold.” She almost said in the morning, but was that what she meant? Why else would she be inviting him back to her apartment to ostensibly sketch him at 10:00 p.m. on a rainy night?

He took her hand and turned it over. “Shall I read your palm?”

His skin was warm, warmer than it should have been. Light from the street flashed over his hair, showed the faint shimmer of beard on his jaw, the growth of a day. She thought, I will remember this.

“Sure.”

He spread her fingers open, stroked the center of her hand. Tillie was acutely aware of each brush of his fingers. “Long lifeline,” he commented, then: “Hmm. A break early. Did you suffer an illness as a child?”

Was he really reading her palm? “I did have a fall when I was three or four.”

“You don’t know which one?”

Answering that honestly would mean getting into things about her mother that she wasn’t interested in expressing to a stranger. To deflect, she tugged the streak of white in the hair over her temple. “That’s when I got this.”

“Head injury?”

She nodded. “I was out for several days, they say. I had to learn to speak all over again.”

His attention sharpened, a contrast to his mild comment. “Interesting.” He bent his head. “And this”—he slid his finger from the pad beneath her middle finger to the heart of her palm—“might be the breakup with the man who misses you.”

The man who misses you. The words gave her a strange ache. “He does.”

“Do you miss him, too?”

She raised her eyes. Shook her head.

Liam bent in and kissed her. He held her hand, and his other arm moved behind her shoulders, giving her a sense of protection. The touch of their mouths created a sense of light, and a fragrance of forest enveloped them. Tillie leaned in as if enchanted, pulled by something she couldn’t name—

A bird cawed in her head. The porch from the painting emerged clearly on the screen of her imagination. Trees stood sentry around it, and the bird hopped down to the railing. A giant cat raced up the steps, and the bird flew away—

The lurking headache abruptly bloomed, throbbed across the bridge of her nose, and she felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Pulling away, she breathed in, then out. “Sorry,” she whispered, trying to calm the nausea. “It’s just—”

His hand fell between her shoulder blades.

Embarrassment mingled with the sudden, hard arrival of a full-blown migraine. She was trying not to barf in the cab when they pulled up in front of her building. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I can—”

“Let me help you inside. That’s all.”

They ran toward the foyer in the deluge. Her feet and shins were splashed with water, her hair soaked before they reached the stoop. She paused for a moment in the foyer, thinking wildly that she should check the mail, but the blindness had spread over one eye, and she didn’t even know if she could climb the four flights to her apartment. Sinking down on the stairs, she rested her head on her forearms.

“Do you have some medication to take?” he asked. “Can I get you something?”

She raised her head. His crown was surrounded with shimmering lights, like a halo. “It’s four flights.”

“C’mon. Lean on me.”

Honestly, she was so grateful for his presence, she didn’t think about anything else. Taking it slow, she held on to the railing. A whisper of regret moved through her—she wouldn’t see him again after all of this.

In a way, that made it easier. She didn’t ordinarily take men to her apartment. It was too personal, too revealing, but without his help, she’d be sitting at the bottom of the stairs with her head on her knees.

Her loft, which sounded fancy but wasn’t in the slightest, occupied most of the top floor. It was barely finished and cold as the tundra. The only reason she’d landed there was because she’d inherited it from a friend who had moved to Los Angeles. It was two thousand square feet of open space and windows. To counter the cold, she’d scattered space heaters around and grouped the living areas together. The rest was open for easels and supplies and stacks of canvases. Organized chaos. Liam looked at the painting closest to them, a nude female nursing a baby wolf, her hair wild and full of vines. He said nothing, but it made Tillie feel vulnerable. Too much of her was visible in this room. Far too much for a stranger to see.

When he said gently, “Let’s get you settled,” she nodded and took a step toward her bedroom—

And fainted dead away, like some Victorian heroine.

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About the Author

Barbara O’Neal is the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of more than a dozen novels of women’s fiction, including the #1 Amazon Charts bestseller When We Believed in Mermaids, This Place of Wonder, and The Starfish Sisters. Her award-winning books have been published in more than two dozen countries. She lives on the coast of Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent. To learn more about Barbara and her works, visit www.barbaraoneal.com.